A division and impending split in a national Jewish organization is also serving to highlight a conflict between Jews in the Eastern U.S. versus those in the West, according to two reports. The Jewish Week (Jan. 11) reports that the firing of a popular West Coast director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the leading Jewish defense organization […]

The latest issue of the Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions (No. 115, July-September, 2001) includes an article by French expert Olivier Roy suggesting that ethnicity and nationalism will continue to play a key role in Central Asian Islam, even in its militant strain. Islam had not entirely disappeared from Central Asia during the Soviet period: in […]

Sri Lanka continues to be caught in an escalating civil war between the majority Buddhist and minority Hindu factions, although there is an emergence of a religious peace movement. The Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Winter) notes that nationalism and opportunism have as much to do with the decades-old conflict as religion. The conflict mainly centers on the Sri […]

The warming of relations between the Assyrian Church and the Roman Catholic Church was vividly demonstrated by the Vatican’s recent “Guidelines for admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.” The Church of the East, often described as “Assyrian” in order to emphasize its Persian heritage and to […]

A schism has developed in the Russian Church Outside Russia, one of the larger exile Russian Orthodox churches, over leadership issues and the prospect of rapprochement with the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). Following the retirement of Metropolitan Vitaly Ustinov, who had been the Primate of the ROCOR, the  Council of Bishops elected Metropolitan Laurus […]

A special provision allowing Episcopal parishes converting en masse to Roman Catholicism to keep their Anglican traditions and liturgy has found few churches taking Rome up on the offer, according to a report in New Oxford Review magazine (November). The arrangement, called Anglican Use parishes, was established by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith […]

The Vineyard churches, a network of charismatic congregations, are becoming increasingly diverse in practice and worship if not doctrine, reports Cutting Edge, (Fall) a newsletter published by the church group. The Association of Vineyard Churches is known for its freewheeling and informal contemporary services (called the “new paradigm”) that stress charismatic “signs and wonders,” such as […]